The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky

Tiffany Aching is a practical girl who lives on the rolling downlands known as the Chalk. It's a quiet country, a safe country, largely free of monsters and tyrants, until another world knocks on the door and things start creeping in. Granny Aching would have sent them packing, but Granny is dead, and that leaves nine year old Tiffany to take care of business; because if not her, then who?

Fortunately, she isn't without help, as the local clan of the Nac Mac Feagle have taken a shine to her, and what could be more useful when confronting a faerie queen than a band of tiny, blue men with anger management issues?

The second of Terry Pratchett's more child-oriented Discworld novels (the first was The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents) and the first in the Tiffany Aching series, The Wee Free Men serves as an introduction to Tiffany and her Pictsie allies, who are basically a pack of tiny, drunken, woad-painted brawlers with far more speed and strength than their size implies and a bizarre quasi-Scots dialect. Tiffany's enemy, the Queen, first seen in Lords and Ladies, is a terrifying being, powerful and utterly callous, and her parasite world with its collection of interesting and unpleasant passengers presents a horrifying, dreamlike environment for a latter-day Alice to challenge with wit, courage and a cast-iron skillet.

A Hat Full of Sky picks up the story two years on, with Tiffany heading off to begin her apprenticeship as a witch with Miss Level, a woman with two bodies. The Chalk is short on witches, but in the mountains there are many, and Tiffany meets a circle of other apprentices who are very keen on black cloaks, silver jewellery and doing proper magic rather than all this going around making poultices and cutting people's toenails for them. Unfortunately, magic can be risky business, and carelessness can cost you everything.

Once more aided by the eager and occasionally competent Nac Mac Feagle, Tiffany must face a Hiver, a being of pure memory seeking a mind to think with and a body to act with. It possesses her, and uses the coolness and ruthlessness that makes her a good witch to make her a bad person.

Even more than The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky is about the making of a Discworld witch, with wisdom from the great Granny Weatherwax almost secondary to Tiffany's own internal revelations. It's about being the person who does when others say something should be done and about the difference between being tough and being a bully. It's actually a pretty rugged how-to on being a good person (which is not the same thing as nice; not the same thing at all.)

Both audiobooks are narrated by Stephen Briggs, who seems to be one of Audible's go-to guys. He gets the job done, without being outstanding.